Lack of shiny, but also the system to search and sort them is SO bad that you have a hard time finding them. The spotlight is nice, but they should at least have a folder they dump the good ones into so you can find them. Would be nice to even have a DEV kinda reviewing them on the side, and putting the 'good' ones into the Must Play bin for us to find easily. Minimal effort on their part, and it'll appear like all this content is being promoted by them. They could even make it that if the DEV that reviews them likes it enough to promote, he tosses in better/shinier rewards at the end.

keep our review process, and just have them check out the best ones and see if they're worthy of promotion. At the very least, keep all the spotlight missions in one place, so if you miss it that week, it's still right there. Right now, it's about impossible to find the good ones unless you already know the name.

As for the STFs? I play them because there's not much else to do. I'm pretty good at them, and they reward decent DIL for the effort. And the dumb urge to try and beat the RNG and get the damned purple ground drops (all set several times over with the space sets). I get good DIL without having to run all over the place doing silly grinds, the chips and salvage buy me gear to load out all my ships, and I just want the last set piece (Infected!) and the accolades for finishing the sets at this point.

I USED TO like them, but they forced the grind so much that I'm just playing to finish now. It's just play by rote, and spin the wheel at the end. Get disappointed. Wash, rinse, repeat. But like I said, don't have to travel somewhere to join the queue, already geared up for it, just easy to jump in and kill 30 min that way.

REALLY hoping I can get that last drop before the system changes and I have to start over, just the personal shield away.

They need to introduce more of these STFs, this set is pretty played out. As far as things to do, it's pretty high on the entertainment process, but afte 2 years, they've wrung it pretty dry, time to add more. They could expand more with Terradome, make a new set with another bad guy, whatever, but I can't keep doing these.

While I like that you can guarantee an eventual set piece in the new system, it DOES cheapen it if you can pick whatever you want. No one's gonna play ground once you can win the ground piece by grinding the much easier, faster space missions. Can do all 3 space in the time it takes to have a decent IGE run, and in the space ones, pretty low chance of failure or people quitting. Why would people keep running IGE after that? It's WAY harder than CGE or KAGE, and takes longer, with people rage-quitting after failing the boss once or twice. Even if it's not specific to each set piece like now, there should at least be ground points and space points, so you still have to play SOME ground mission to get the ground gear. Maybe can play CGE instead of IGE, but gotta do SOME ground to get that piece of gear.

Lack of shiny, but also the system to search and sort them is SO bad that you have a hard time finding them. The spotlight is nice, but they should at least have a folder they dump the good ones into so you can find them. Would be nice to even have a DEV kinda reviewing them on the side, and putting the 'good' ones into the Must Play bin for us to find easily. Minimal effort on their part, and it'll appear like all this content is being promoted by them. They could even make it that if the DEV that reviews them likes it enough to promote, he tosses in better/shinier rewards at the end.

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This is more of the area where I can't wait for them to finish major work on the Neverwinter Foundry so they can put some of those resources on the next backport to STO. That Foundry's got WAY better methods of finding missions, including the ability to "follow" your favorite authors, a microblogging for them, etc, and the ability to group things "geographically".

Also, bear in mind that the current plan is to convert your current Borg salvage and stuff into a crate that you can only unlock when you reach Tier 5 in Omega Force Reputation, which at minimum is 2-3 months later if you play every single day.

Personally, while I understand the devs not wanting any players having an unfair reputation advantage, I still think its a really silly idea to have a locked crate filled with an unknown amount of stuff sitting in the bank for 3 months.

So basically no matter what i do i will have to do even more grind.....and i thought the grinding we had at present was enough to drive you grind crazy.

Well i will just leave it till the conversion then....see if i even be bothered to continue grinding.

Thanks all for the info.

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The grind now will be more predictable, though. You will be more able to say "if I spend this much time on STFs, I will get this gear I want in X days", instead of "it could be today, or it could take six months, or it could take six years if I really get unlucky".

I'm still using the Borg Retro STF set.
I spent my EDCs on an Omega shield, but it was only so/so compared to the Borg shield, at least in my experience. My Borg Salvage went to dilithium, which gave me enough to cash in for 175 Zen, which is nice, since I can't buy Zen these days.

I was going to hold out for the Omega marks, but after I read what Timelord Victorious said about how they were going to do it, I just thought it was stupid and cashed it all in. I'd love to get my hands on some Mk XII gear, but I don't play elite STFs, because when I'm on, no one else in the fleet is on, and knowing my luck I would totally screw it up with other players. I don't want to be that guy.

It's not that I'm bad at playing, but I usually need to run through an STF once or twice before I get a good handle on what to do, though I always follow directions if someone is more knowledgeable than I am.

In the Ground Zero mission, Romulan Front, I'm now fighting the IRW Sithesh. All fun and well, got to Hobus I fragment, need to defeat the Sithesh. All'l going ok, pretty hard to bear but still. Then suddenly, the ship disappears for a bit, then reappears and seems to be stuck in the border of the map. Even when I'm in weapons-range and get a clean lock, my weapons aren't firing so I can't damage it any further, but it can still shoot at me.

I'm usually on for an hour or so somewhere between 5-7 ET, and always willing to help. Failing that, just go do one and learn the ropes, and you're fine.

Try and join the EliteSTF channel, don't play with random PUGS. that way you won't get AFKers (as much), and idiots that won't listen or participate. Most of the ones in that channel have established plans that pretty much always work, and you just jump in, confirm it, and go.

As long as you show willingness to actually follow direction, can't see the issue. Tell them to explain the plan better and you'll follow it. And then show up with non-useless gear, can't imagine you'll have any troubles.

Elite isn't THAT much harder once you accept the standard plans to beat them, and they pay double...

In the Ground Zero mission, Romulan Front, I'm now fighting the IRW Sithesh. All fun and well, got to Hobus I fragment, need to defeat the Sithesh. All'l going ok, pretty hard to bear but still. Then suddenly, the ship disappears for a bit, then reappears and seems to be stuck in the border of the map. Even when I'm in weapons-range and get a clean lock, my weapons aren't firing so I can't damage it any further, but it can still shoot at me.

Wow, no idea. If you run the mission again, does the same thing happen?

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Left the mission, and was able to restart half way through. Went to Hobus 1 again, started battling the Sithesh again.... same thing happened. It disappears for a few seconds, returns but is 'stuck' in the map border. I can lock on weapons. But they just won't fire. Weird thing, the Sithesh CAN fire at me.

Sometimes there's weird glitches. Just have to exit out and go again. It will usually take you back to the last checkpoint, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do the whole thing over again.

Unless that's what you've done; then you just have to put in a ticket, and maybe wait until it gets patched or something. I had to do that with the second Cardassian mission - it would drop the mission when I switched maps.